IMPRISONED BY THE INTELLECT by Tim Wyatt

It sounds deeply paradoxical but humanity is becoming progressively stupefied by its own cleverness and strangely stultified by its own intellectual prowess. Some even assert that this mental ingenuity threatens its very future because it has acquired the ability to invent and deploy ever more demeaning and devastating technologies of destruction, depletion and control. Has mind become man’s worst enemy?

In one sense the rapid development of mind over the past few centuries has been a towering achievement and perhaps the key triumphal ingredient of the material ‘progress’ we have encountered and enjoyed. But the mind remains an enduring and impenetrable mystery. Science cannot satisfactorily define it other than as an epi-phenomenon of neuro-chemical activity in the cerebral cortex – that is, a purely material phenomenon and nothing more. Most laboratory-dwellers cannot envisage mind without brain. Those of an esoteric bent most certainly can because they appreciate its true capabilities and that it can operate in non-physical realms.

Crystal Palace sphinx by D J Elliott

The bulk of human beings tend to misuse this mighty intellect. On the one hand they fail to understand its immense hidden potential. On the other, they have no idea of how to control it. Some are even ruled by it.

The Theosophical idea of kama-manas – the mind fuelled by desire – is an apt description because apart from a select and elevated few, the majority of people’s thoughts are chiefly coloured by deeper, often venal and frequently reptilian emotional urges. Uncontrolled monkey-minds chatter incessantly to themselves.

Greed, anger, conquest, brutality, profit-at-any-cost, supremacy, jealousy, domination and hosts of lesser emotional evils pervade the wide-open spaces of much human psychology – and by definition, large swathes of human behaviour as well.

Welcome to the world of the lower, concrete, desire-fuelled mind. This is the realm where most people’s thoughts are confined as they jangle around in their own private echo-chambers. Animated by often base emotions, the lower mind can wind up imprisoning itself.

It is the emotional code which needs to be cracked here because this continues to dominate the lower mind’s operations. Who was it who observed that experiencing emotional love was like being chained to a savage wild dog? Inflamed and negative emotions especially can often be the sworn enemy of happiness, contentment, equilibrium, balance, nobility of character and decent behaviour. (I know this to be a fact from personal experience.)

Therefore, it would seem to be an overriding imperative that human beings at least begin to develop a much greater degree of emotional control – and intelligence. Emotional intelligence is only just beginning to appear on humanity’s curriculum. Some enlightened schools have begun to teach it. One day we may all be as coldly analytical and of devoid emotion as Mr Spock in the classic TV sci-fi series Star Trek but this is unlikely to happen any time soon. In the meantime kama-manas rages on unchecked.

However, human beings have a more elevated counterpart to the lower, mundane mind which endlessly pursues its repetitive yet futile quest to fulfil its own unsatisfiable longings. This higher mind offers a different universe in which to operate. It isn’t as congested or polluted with everyday trivialities, reactive responses or deadening banalities. It has a more sophisticated function. It is part of the soul.

This higher mind – part of that trinity which along with wisdom-intuition (buddhi) and spirit (atma) makes up the eternal reincarnating Individuality or soul – has superior abilities. It can conceptualise and create. It appreciates truth and beauty. It is the home of inspiration and the imagination. It understands the world of spirit and higher concealed realities.

To use a vehicular analogy – if the lower mind is a crude ox-cart struggling up a steep muddy mountain track then the higher mind is our most advanced aeronautical vehicle soaring majestically through the upper reaches of the stratosphere.

Everyone has a higher mind – at least potentially. But in many people it is entirely latent and rarely if ever accessed let alone used. What proportion of humanity actively and regularly applies their higher minds can only be a matter of wild speculation. I believe it would be true to say that it is only a relatively small proportion of the eight billion plus human inhabitants currently alive on this planet. But I believe its use is indeed increasing.

Far be it from me to belittle the lower, concrete mind. Its rapid development over recent centuries has been the cornerstone of advancement technologically, scientifically, socially, economically and in virtually every other respect. The lower mind of logic has inspired science and helped it number-crunch its way through mysterious mathematics as well as exploring the most distant vistas in the universe and the most miniscule and intimate interactions of the quantum world. With it we can memorise facts and master skills. Without it we would not be where we are now – for better or worse.

Whatever its analytical and practical uses in day-to-day life, the lower mind still has severe limitations and boundaries beyond which it cannot advance. It relies very much on our very constricted five physical senses. Using these it determines our highly restricted view of reality – which remains largely materially based. It is difficult for the lower mind to transcend these crude senses but it has the potential to connect with its higher part and produce a fully integrated mind.

While we would not be able to operate without this lower mind, we are unable to advance without finding a way to locate and fire up that higher vehicle. This is one of the chief developments slowly but gradually unfolding in the human kingdom at the moment.

The modern Theosophical movement has been promoting this idea for a century and a half – acutely aware that no mass mind-awakening programme either scientific or religious has or will ever achieve this. As always, it is a matter of personal effort and application and only a relative few aspire to this. Only comparatively small numbers feel this is a desirable and viable endeavour. This has always been the case. Mind exploration and expansion has always been a strictly minority pursuit.

Employing the higher mind will be the task of forthcoming development groups of humanity as new sub-races and Root Races eventually emerge. There is evidence that what is effectively an enhanced form of consciousness is already beginning to make its presence felt in some of those now reincarnating.

And yet discovering, exploring and using our higher minds will still not represent the full flowering of human achievement. We still will not have reached the mountain’s summit. We have something even more potent to unlock and unleash from our spiritual arsenal. Beyond but attached to our higher minds is that even more mighty faculty of buddhi or wisdom-intuition mentioned earlier. As with higher minds, in the bulk of humanity this also lies largely dormant and untapped. Some are entirely unaware of its existence.

Wisdom-intuition bypasses and transcends the intellect offering direct inputs of higher-grade knowledge unfiltered by either the lower or higher mind. It is fully functional in some while with some individuals this ability occasionally breaks through in the form of hunches, flashes of insight or strong gut instincts which are then frequently but thankfully not always ignored. In its basic form it also displays as raw conscience and basic morality – a sense of what is inherently right or wrong, true or false. It is also a realm of compassion.

This is where the ‘ideas’ of artists, inventors, composers, writers, philosophers, social reformers and other visionaries originate. This faculty provides a conduit to a limitless storehouse of knowledge.

Ultimately this buddhic principle will become fully enshrined and operative within the human constitution. Eventually it will become standard issue and fully functional. This faculty will emerge more fully during the final two sub-races of our present Fifth Root Race. By the time we reach the Sixth Root Race at some distant point in the far future, wisdom-intuition will have become a permanent sixth sense and augment and extend the existing five – touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight.

At this point – and perhaps long before – humans will realise that intellect, both lower and higher, offers a necessary, functional but restricted type of perception and ensuing consciousness. But wisdom-intuition extends the horizons much further and opens up new avenues of awareness beyond brain and mind.

Its appearance will no doubt play a major role in developing humanity’s emerging psi abilities especially in such areas as telepathy or direct mind-to-mind communication. It may also help to upgrade our fractured linear view of time into the singularity of an eternal present. It will hopefully promote a greater understanding and utilisation of human psi capabilities.  Despite monumental evidence for the existence of these noetic faculties such as telekinesis, precognition and clairvoyance, they continue to be denied and often derided by most proponents of hubristic and myopic modern science because they offend its rigid worldview.

The eventual maturation of the wisdom-intuition principle will fundamentally change who we are, how we operate and why. But this is a lofty and long-term challenge. In the meantime controlling that lower merry-go-round mind is the immediate priority and this is one of the most challenging things humanity has to achieve.

If I were a betting man – which I’m not – I wouldn’t put money on a fast fix for any of this.

Tim Wyatt’s books are available from http://www.firewheelbooks.co.uk and his YouTube channel: